The standards for deciding who should be listed as an author of a paper vary considerably from one discipline to another. Some variation is inescapable due to the difference in the way research gets done.
An experiment in elementary particle physics may involve more than a hundred people in the design of the equipment and the collection and analysis of the data. Each may make a significant contribution to this large-scale project, and hence each could be listed as an author. An experiment in ecology involving trapping insects, however, is likely to involve only a handful of people. A person is not likely to be listed as an author merely for designing the insect trap.
Despite the differences in the way research gets done, there is a growing consensus across disciplines that being an author of a paper requires that:
- You have made a significant intellectual contribution to the paper
- You have read and approved the paper prior to submission
- You are willing to stand by the results.
There is increasingly less tolerance for honorary authorship awarded to people associated with a research group who had little or nothing to do with the particular project reported in a paper.
A willingness to stand by the results of a paper goes along with accepting the benefits for being a co-author. It is up to all co-authors to ensure the quality of the publication. If a mistake is discovered, or if fraud among one of the team members is uncovered, all co-authors share some of the responsibility, although generally not in equal proportions. A co-author who hides behind the defense of not knowing what the other co-authors were doing should not have been listed as a co-author in the first place.
